I could probably say a lot about chickens. Chickens aren’t as smart as cats or dogs. They do a lot of dumb stuff, and will eat basically anything that stands out to them like styrofoam or paint chips. They are omnivores, they will hunt and eat mostly bugs but sometimes rodents and snakes. When a chicken notices something like that it wants to catch it will jump at it suddenly, if it’s a bug sometimes they get it but otherwise seem to forget what they were doing after a few seconds. Chickens drink water by tipping their heads back. Sometimes they clean their beaks by wiping them back and forth on the ground after eating. Chickens have a couple different noises they make. a sort of ‘errrrrrr’ sound when people show up (which supposedly they have different noises for different people to communicate information to other chickens). An egg laying noise ‘buk buk buk buk buGAWK’ they make around when they lay an egg, although if there is a rooster the rooster takes over making that noise. Roosters have some extra noises, the crowing noise everyone is familiar with, a really indignant sounding noise when people walk away from them, and a noise for if they have found food. Chickens have a social hierarchy and can be kind of mean to each other, but it varies. Higher ranked chickens can chase the rest away from food, but all of them will try to grab any large piece of food and run with it so they can eat it all themselves, the rest will chase and try to take it. If you make two piles of food, a group of chickens will go back and forth between them. It goes like this: the lower ranked chickens get chased away from one pile, and head to the second one. A few seconds later the higher ranked chickens notice and abandon their food pile to chase them away from the second pile. There can be small cliques of chickens either raised together or ostracised for some reason by the others that are very protective of each other and get along really well. If a chicken is basically solo and not very welcome in the group it’s way more likely to be friendly towards people. You need to separate a chicken with a cut because they have a strong reaction to blood and the rest of them will try really hard to peck at it, especially when they are chicks. They usually run away, but there was one rooster who had a long molt and the hens kept pulling out the pinfeathers on his neck and it got all red, and he just stood there like he didn’t even notice. Chickens have a strong sense of who they can push around and try to test their limits. We had a dog who they would chase away from his own water bowl, but usually they are afraid of dogs. They are not afraid of motor vehicles. They are very afraid of umbrellas and things with a large surface area, and brightly colored clothes they aren’t use to. A scared chicken will start squawking and running in long bounds, propelling itself forward with its wings. One interesting strategy I read about for keeping hawks away from chickens is maintaining and feeding a large colony of crows, because killing or capturing hawks is illegal and crows will chase them away. If the scales on a chickens leg are raised up it probably has mites which you can treat by putting some kind of oil on them to suffocate the mites. When allowed to free range they usually stay within probably like an acre of where they roost, they don’t usually go very far. Chickens are very racist, they will strongly prefer the company of other chickens that look like them and pick on the rest.

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